Don’t Open Till Christmas Starring Edmund Purdom, Alan Lake, Belinda Mayne Directed by Edmund Purdom 1984 While watching Don’t Open Till Christmas, the British “masked murderer kills guys dressed up like Santa Claus” movie, I couldn’t help but think of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode “Christmas.” In the cold open, Detectives Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg)…
Merry Scary Christmas: Nightmare Before Christmas
As I shared for Halloween, I’m not good at being scared. I’m a big baby that has to keep the lights on after every foray into the creepier side of films. Even when those films have stayed with me in positive ways for years, the fear is a constant, coursing tension in my body. Such…
Merry Scary Christmas: The Wolfman and The Wolf Man
“Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers at night, may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” — original poem written for The Wolf Man In 2010, when I watched The Wolfman in the theater, I’d never seen the 1941 original The Wolf Man….
Merry Scary Christmas: The Raddest and Baddest Festive Final Girls
Christmas is an odd time of year, one where millions of people want nothing more than a strange old man to break into their house and leave them stuff. A tradition that seems so nightmare inducing has unsurprisingly inspired many a festive fright-fest, covering everything from seminal low budget gore-fests to seasonal event movies. Holiday horror has become a…
Merry Scary Christmas: The Horror of Love Actually
Love Actually is a popular romantic Christmas film that I can’t honestly believe is meant to be taken as sincere. If this series is meant to talk about Christmas horror movies, then Love Actually is a horror film in disguise, in that we have elevated a film full of terrible men to the status of romcom…
Watching Krampus During a Very Scary, Not So Merry Holiday Season
Why don’t we have more Christmas horror movies? American horror movies are rife with jerks who get what’s coming to them and Krampus is the perfect Christmas twist. Krampus, for the uninitiated, is a demonic goat creature who, instead of enticing children into good behavior with the metaphorical carrot like Santa does, goes for the…
Merry Scary Christmas: The White Heteronormative Horror of Hallmark Christmas Movies
Within the grand history of storytelling there are many terrifying alternate universes. The Skynet apocalypse of the Terminator franchise, the X-Men’s Sentinel-laden “Days of Future Past” reality, the devolved, ultra capitalism of The Running Man and the brainwashed secret civilization of They Live. But perhaps none are as harrowing and vacuous as the one created…
Merry Scary Christmas: Gremlins Just Gets Me
I have never liked Christmas. I’m a child of divorce. Any fall or winter holidays in my childhood consisted of being passed back and forth because of custody agreements, regardless of what I, the child in question, actually wanted. Christmas especially was a nightmare of being shunted between three sets of grandparents and two parents,…
Merry Scary Christmas: Masculinity In Jack Frost (and Jack Frost)
Trigger Warning: Please note that this article discusses a rape that occurs within one of the films.
Merry Scary Christmas: Bob’s Burgers’ “Christmas in the Car”
“You know what? Who needs a nice cozy, warm, comfortable home? We can have our Christmas right here in the car!” “Yeah, until it runs out of gas and we freeze to death.” “Yeah.” It’s perhaps surprising that a show as gentle and warmhearted as Bob’s Burgers gives its holiday episodes a dark, maniacal edge. “Dawn…
Merry Scary Christmas: The Horror of The Santa Clause
Most holiday films don’t hinge their plots on involuntary manslaughter, but most holiday films aren’t as inadvertently grim as The Santa Clause. Instead of a heart-warming tale of what it would be like if your father was Santa, this film presents a world where Santa is a role much like Death. If you kill him,…
Merry Scary Christmas: The Last Winter (Or How I Should Have Just Watched The Thing)
I am not a horror movie person. I’m a “hide behind a pillow until the monster is gone” kind of person. But when Merry Scary Christmas time rolled around again at WWAC, I decided to challenge myself a little and take part. Now, the one exception to my no-horror-movies rule is John Carpenter’s The Thing…
